I got the T460 refurbished and I really didn’t want to run Windows 10 on it. I last used Linux for any real length of time a good 20 years ago, so I’m pretty inexperienced with it at this point and I had to figure out how to install it myself.
They made it unreasonably difficult to first install an OS from a USB stick. I had to go into the BIOS, turn UEFI to legacy, turn off secure boot, reboot to boot from the USB stick, install Mint, then turn legacy back to UEFI to get it to boot from the hard drive. This took about 2 hours of trying to figure it out by doing a lot of forums reading.
I do not blame the Mint community or the Linux community as a whole. There is absolutely no reason that it should have been that hard to install Mint on that notebook.
I don’t even think getting into the BIOS once time should be necessary, but changing a BIOS setting so you can install the OS and changing it back so you can run the OS off the internal drive is just ridiculous and I find it hard to believe Lenovo couldn’t have just made it easier. I’m fairly convinced this was intentional on their part.
I’m not an IT professional or anything, but I know enough to figure this stuff out with effort, but it shouldn’t have taken that effort. It should have been almost plug-and-play. This is 2024. The notebook isn’t even 10 years old.
Is there actually a good reason for this or are they just kissing Microsoft’s ass?
I had to go into the BIOS, turn UEFI to legacy, turn off secure boot, reboot to boot from the USB stick, install Mint, then turn legacy back to UEFI to get it to boot from the hard drive.
That is ridiculous and it does sound like a Lenovo problem.
I’m running Mint on a Surface Laptop (which was difficult to install because Microsoft), but getting Secure Boot working only required changing the UEFI settings to allow non-Microsoft Secure Boot certificates. With that set Mint boots just fine both with Secure Boot enabled and disabled. So do USB installation ISOs.
Secure Boot can still be a pain. To get Virtualbox working with it enabled required signing several kernel modules which took a while to figure out.
Mint is great though. After distrohopping for years I finally decided I wanted to just use the OS and GUI, not play around with them and I came back to Mint. The latest versions of Mint just work and work for years once they’re installed. For me, going back to Windows (especially W11) feels like punishment. I hope you enjoy the switch.
Being unable to boot from a USB drive in UEFI mode sounds like a Mint problem. I just booted from an Ubuntu LTS USB on a similar machine, installed with all default BIOS. Haven’t touched Secure Boot either. No trouble.
Hm. Maybe I should have tried a different flavor of Linux in terms of ease of install. But Mint seemed like the best choice for me and now that it’s actually up and running, it’s fine.
By all means, if it works already, don’t fuck with it.
This community hates on Ubuntu but these are the kinds of corner cases that can make or break a new user’s journey. Experienced users can resolve those with no emotion and we often discount the difficulty and importance of such issues to less experienced users. There’s been a lot of work put in Ubuntu to tackle these kinds of issues - paper cuts. Recall the One Hundred Paper Cuts project. This is why I won’t stop recommending Ubuntu LTS for new users.
This sounds like it was strictly the fault of the USB load. If you make a UEFI USB (you should use Ventoy, it’s great btw) all you would need to do is shut off Secure Boot and install.
Most bootable drives don’t support Secure Boot. You turn it off, do the install, and turn it back on if you want it. I personally just leave it off.
Outside of those caveats everything you described is industry-standard stuff. Nothing to do with Lenovo.
It’s impossible to make the situation with BIOS easier. Incorrect boot order and secure boot are enabled by default for security and Windows compatibility reasons. Though I never heard that it’s required to turn on legacy mode and change it back. Probably it’s a highly model-specific thing. And btw secure boot is Mint’s fault. It just doesn’t support it yet
It’s not even machine specific. UEFI vs legacy bios boot mode is universally supported in all but the latest systems. If OP had to switch to legacy boot mode then they probably made the USB “incorrectly”. You’d run into the same issue on windows if you made the USB boot drive for legacy bios mode.
I’d love to know what I did wrong if you can tell me. I used Etcher like the instructions on Mint’s website told me to.
And btw secure boot is Mint’s fault. It just doesn’t support it yet
Not the case. I’m typing this on a Surface laptop running Mint with Secure Boot enabled. Even the bootable Mint USB can be run with Secure Boot turned on.
secure boot is Mint’s fault.
Well now I’m just surprised considering this is a 2016 notebook. They should be supporting a feature that old, shouldn’t they?
Some distros support it but it’s only like 4 or 6 of them. I guess it’s really hard to support and maintain such feature
This has nothing to do with Lenovo perse, this is the average experience for every laptop I’ve owned which had Secure Boot turned on.
You know what is fun? Having your Dell basically bricking because Fedora starts shipping a new version of shim-x64 which completely fails the UEFI handover to bootloader. Leaving you unable to boot at all, so no chance of reaching rescue mode. Then more fun times of booting a live environment from a usb stick after going through the same hoops you went through, finding out how to decrypt your BTRFS partitions, manually mounting and chrooting them so you can finally downgrade the offending package.
Linux and Secure Boot just isn’t a great combination if you ask me.
That sounds pretty awful, sorry that you went through that.
